New Zealand Times. (PUBLISHED DAILY.) MONDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 1877.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 4964, 19 February 1877, Page 2

New Zealand Times. (PUBLISHED DAILY.) MONDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 1877.

A recent case of corporal punishment at the Wellington College excited no small share of public attention, and was made the subject of a most unsatisfactory inquiry by the Board of Governors. We have purposely deferred writing upon the matter until now, since anything like unprejudiced comment would have lost attention in the somewhat heated manner in which the question was taken up and discussed by newspaper correspondents, and even by the Governors themselves, when the subject first came under their notice. But as calmer moments have now supervened, we may be permitted to point out a good many matters in connection with the punishment of Mr. Turnbull’s boys which seem to us to have escaped attention. In the first place the mawkish nonsense talked about corporal punishment in schools is to be entirely reprehended. The fact that in order to ensure the proper discipline of a school the power of inflicting corporal punishment must be placed in the hands of the head master, to be exercised at his ■discretion, does not presuppose that boys are to be inhumanly or unjustly beaten. It is merely the admission that under some circumstances, which are liable to arise in any school, corporal punishment must be administered. For this reason it is all the more to be regretted that Mr. Wilson, by his very injudicious conduct, has furnished a species of arguments to those tender-hearted and tender-skinned philo-boyists, like his worthy Worship the Mayor, who would conduct all educational establishments on a system of moral suasion—a system, it may be said, winch experience has pretty. well proved makes youthful sneaks and adult hypocrites. Moral force should be, and with the great Arnold was, the backbone of discipline in a school, just as, after all, it is in any aggregation of human beings requiring to be kept under command ; but this moral force must be attended by the ability to exercise physical persuasion as well should the other become inadequate. Because corporal punishment in our public schools was at one time so frequently and so brutally administered as to render it a disgrace to the nation, there is no reason why .it should not now be used in its proper place, namely, with offenders insensible to other modes of treatment. The fact is that in this question, as in all others, the just middle course is that which is correct. Flogging jper se will never maintain discipline in a school,: neither will moral suasion where the boys are aware that anything beyond moral suasion is prohibited. Now it is just because the above is the case that the mistake made by Mr; Wilson •ip punishing the 1 young Turnbulls is all the more to.be regretted. Even on his own showing, and on that of Mr. Buckland, we can see no justification for the thrashing he. administered to them, . beat them for having played truant,-' Their allegation is that they thought they had leave to stay away from school. Aiid it may be noticed that the conduct of -the lads fully bears out this allegation. Their actions were not'those of truants, whose custom it is as a rule to avoid observation on the part of those who might notice their presence at a place where they ought not to be. ■ These two hoys went of all other places to the All England Eleven Cricket Match, and walked about there openly, concluding, as we say they most naturally might, from Mr. Auckland’s mode of dismissing them in, the morning, that they were committing no wrong. Mr. Wilson, there can. be little doubt, punished them without sufficient inquiry into .the case, and we mays say, in apparent forgetfulness of that great requisite, ih’all masters, a proper appreciation of the temperaments and dispositions of the boys under his control. ' For from what was brought forward at .the inquiry, it seems plain that ■ the' young Turnbulls were sensitive truth-speaking boys, and that in their case an' alleged offence was one demanding more,, careful inquiry than Mr. Wilson apparently was disposed to give.t But of all the mistakes in connection with this matter, commend us to that made by. the seven wise men who, as Governors of the College, sat in judgment on the whole affair. The decision arrived at by them could not have been, bettered by Dogberry. They found that everyone was wrong and everyone was right, and they evinced a desire in regard to corporal; punishment to place its infliction by' the head master in such a position that any schoolboy could at once question his right to administer it without license i duly; had : and obtained previously from the Board of Governors. This is wisdom indeed.